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Malaak Compton-Rock Empowers Youth
It’s late Sunday morning inside a cavernous Salvation Army Church in Soweto, South Africa. Services, complete with African and traditional music, have just finished and a catchy drum beat with a distinctly American hip-hop sound is coming from the stage. The group of teenagers dancing around the drums is 8,000 miles and an 18-hour plane ride from their New York home. They are mostly from Bushwick, Brooklyn — a community of about 109,000 people only five miles from Manhattan. For some of these kids, it’s their first time away from home. Unfamiliar with Bushwick? It’s mostly a working class neighborhood where families have often struggled. (Continue Reading…)

Oprah Loses No. 1 Spot on Forbes’ Celebrity 100
Angelina Jolie has dethroned Oprah Winfrey as the world’s most powerful celebrity, according to Forbes. The actress grabbed the No. 1 spot from the talk show queen on the magazine’s annual Celebrity 100 list, which ranks the rich and famous based on media exposure and career earnings over the past year. Jolie, a reigning tabloid fixture, earned $27 million, bumping her up from third place on last year’s list, Forbes said, adding that she wields more power due to high-profile turns in hit films such as “Wanted” and “Kung Fu Panda.” At No. 2, Winfrey is still the highest earner — $275 million. Madonna came in third, trailed by Beyonce, Tiger Woods, Bruce Springsteen and Steven Spielberg. (Continue Reading…)

Commentary: What Do You Expect of Black Students?
Back in 1972, on an episode of “All in the Family,” Gloria posed the following riddle to Archie and Meathead. Father and son go driving. There’s an accident. The father is killed instantly, the son is rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery. The surgeon walks in, takes one look at the patient and says, “I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son.” The answer to the apparent paradox eluded Archie, Meathead and the guys down at Kelsey’s bar for the balance of the half hour. They floated theories involving stepfathers, sons-in-law, priests, adoptions and returns from the dead. All of which Archie apparently found more believable than the true answer which was, of course, that the surgeon was the boy’s mother. “If that’s the answer,” he spouted, “that’s the dumbest riddle I ever hoid!” (Continue Reading…)

1. A commotion; a disturbance.
2. A state of nervous activity; a fuss.
3. A cloud of smoke or dust that chokes or smothers.

verb:
1. To make confused; trouble; worry.
2. To be overly concerned with trifles; fuss.

A few gestures allude fleetingly to the iconic Ivanov choreography—crossed wrists, flapping arms, a warding-off pose—but this ballerina is beset with dissatisfaction and discomfort, even though, when Warby’s filmed face appears on the screen—huge, filling it—her gaze is calm and penetrating. That black-and-white image is succeeded by a pother of gulls alighting on water amid swimming ducks.
— Deborah Jowitt, Ros Warby Spreads Her Wings and Takes Off Marching, Village Voice